From Fairy Tale to Nightmare Part 2

by Brooke S.
(Fredericksburg, VA)

Read Part 1 of Fairy Tale to Nightmare

He had started seeing a Psychiatrist in July 2015. I did not fully understand why at the time. I was starting a new job and was stressed from building a new business and a new practice from the bottom up. There were a lot of changes going on. He was up for a promotion to Sargent in his POLICE dept. We had met with a perinatologist in Feb 2016 to see if I could have a successful pregnancy which is where I discovered that my medicine was safe in pregnancy. It was a month later I figured out what caused the miscarriage after I reread and old email to a friend about the vacation from hell. His mother and him would not let me take naps and they were so negative that I was crying again every day. It broke my heart to read the email but then it clicked. We were stressed from planning the wedding or so I thought we were. He was more excited to go on vacation with his mother than on a vacation just the two of us or even talk about the wedding. He tuned me out every time I brought up either. I just wanted him to be as excited for us as he was for a routine vacation he had been going on for years! Finally, we had a fight and he left for his vacation. We did not talk for over a week. I stayed at my parents’ house a couple of days after he came home because I did not know how I felt still. I finally went home to face him to figure out if he truly loved me or if he was just too comfortable to change - he despises change of any kind. We fought and he moved out that night... but he was a different person this night. He was yelling, angry, and it was the first time I thought my life was in danger and that he was going to kill me. We tried to talk later that night and he told me that I was supposed to be his rock - I was supposed to save him from his parents and instead I was dropping a basket case off on their doorstep. I later asked him why he ran back to his parents after our fights and he could not answer me. He always runs from whatever relationship is more difficult at the time because he cannot act like an adult. He must have other people making decisions for him, even today 6 months later his parents are emailing me pretending to be him and asking me for money for him. (This ATM is closed). He also told me he was on high doses of antidepressants and had been for a year... I was stunned. It made sense, the subtle changes I had attributed to stress were from medication - his weight gain, mood instability, depression, worsening anxiety, increased hypochondria, increase in spending, and a long list of sexual dysfunction that was causing the sexual abuse. What I had mistaken for stress and a midlife crisis was driven by the high doses of antidepressants he was taken. His alcohol intake had not helped either in any situation.

I honestly thought he was going to shoot me when I moved the furniture that was mine out at the end of the week. He was irate when he got home - it did not help that he came home early and I was waiting on my father to pick me up. He blew up on the phone at his own parents and told my father to get off his f$&@ing property when he arrived. My father was not going to listen but I thought he might shoot him instead. He finally left and luckily my neighbors were outside watching and they knew the situation. It is scary to me that he is police officer with a gun on high doses of antidepressants with a history of domestic violence and suicidal ideations. Luckily, he is living with his parents again in another state and I am out of that toxic relationship... but it does go full circle....